Market Horror: Glow in the Dark Pork Chops

In Tongzhou, no one can hear you scream. Well, they probably can (despite a lifetime’s firecracker abuse), but will they come to your aid when they see you curled up in a ball, cradling your knees, rocking back and forth and whimpering, “It glows, it glows…”?

Following on from an earlier thing we wrote about chemically bleached pig trotters in, yup, Tongzhou - now this: pig meat that glows blue in the dark. And we’re talking real meat that you eat, not like the time the office joker killed the lights at the Christmas party and ran through trouser-less with a certain body part coloured in with luminous marker pen. No? Just me, then.

If you’re worried that the market-bought pork in your fridge might be tainted – take it out, switch of the lights, and wait. An article in The Shanghaiist cited reports that it glows even brighter after a strong light has been shone on it. So dig out the laser pointer you drunkenly purchased at Houhai Lake.

Xinhua released a report saying that this phenomenon might be the result of pigs gobbling feed with high levels of phosphorous, or the result of light-emitting bacteria that has somehow infiltrated the meat. It said that studies on meat infected with these bacteria found it poses no threat for human consumption, provided it is not spoiled and is cooked properly. Burnt to a crisp it is, then.

If you’d still rather not risk eating the tainted meat (dubbedAvatar meat by netizens, according to ChinaSmack), look at it this way - at least you’ve got a funky new decoration for the top of your Christmas tree.